Primary Mammary Organoid Model of Lactation and Involution

Jakub Sumbal; Aurelie Chiche; Elsa Charifou; Zuzana Koledova; Han Li

doi:10.3389/fcell.2020.00068

Primary Mammary Organoid Model of Lactation and Involution

Front Cell Dev Biol. 2020 Mar 19:8:68. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2020.00068. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Jakub Sumbal^{1

2}, Aurelie Chiche¹, Elsa Charifou¹, Zuzana Koledova², Han Li¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Developmental and Stem Cell Biology, Cellular Plasticity and Disease Modelling, CNRS UMR 3738, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France.
² Department of Histology and Embryology, Faculty of Medicine, Masaryk University, Brno, Czechia.

Abstract

Mammary gland development occurs mainly after birth and is composed of three successive stages: puberty, pregnancy and lactation, and involution. These developmental stages are associated with major tissue remodeling, including extensive changes in mammary epithelium, as well as surrounding stroma. Three-dimensional (3D) mammary organoid culture has become an important tool in mammary gland biology and enabled invaluable discoveries on pubertal mammary branching morphogenesis and breast cancer. However, a suitable 3D organoid model recapitulating key aspects of lactation and involution has been missing. Here, we describe a robust and straightforward mouse mammary organoid system modeling lactation and involution-like process, which can be applied to study mechanisms of physiological mammary gland lactation and involution as well as pregnancy-associated breast cancer.

Keywords: 3D culture; fibroblast growth factor 2; involution; lactation; mammary gland; milk production; organoid; prolactin.